Learn Spanish Travel Spanish Blog

Hello from beautiful Buenos Aires.  We’re here, all settled in and getting ready for our classes to start tomorrow morning.  It’s a lovely springtime Sunday evening (November 2nd).  Today was probably in the upper 70s, a nice breeze, yada yada yada.  It’s Spring in November.  I mean, how cool is that?   We got here yesterday at mid-day after an uneventful but not un-interesting flight.  I guess it’s the first time I’ve ever flown on Halloween, because I don’t remember ever having reservationists or flight attendants dressed up as witches or zombies before.  I’ll attach a picture later, but right now a word about our internet connection  –  as in “I don’t know how long I’m going to have an internet connection”. 

The good news when we arrived at our acommodations was that we have wi-fi.  We didn’t expect to have access in our room, much less free access.  The bad news is that it’s awfully weak.  We haven’t been able to get Skype  to work yet (we’re still trying).  So we bought a calling card for $10AR (that’s 10 Argentine pesos, which is about $3.40 US).  Still not bad for an hour of talk time, but you have to use it from a land line to avoid other charges.  Still, we can do that here.  Anyway, more on communications later.  I told you that because I can’t attach a photo of our witch of a flight attendant with such a weak signal.  I’ll save that for a later post.  I’ll also correct  misspellings etc later.  I’m just trying to get through this without it dying on me.

Anyway, a couple of hours to Miami, a couple of  hours IN Miami, 9 hours to Buenos Aires, 45 minutes to our room, and we were here.  We debated the pros and cons of the various ways of getting here from the airport.  You can take a taxi, a remis (which is sort of a van) or a bus to the metro and then one change of metro line.  The difference was 45 minutes for $45 US or 2+ hours  for $25US.  We chose the taxi.  That wasn’t as cut and dried as it sounds, because we wanted to explore the Metro (hereafter known as the Subte) anyway, we only had a backpack and a knapsack each, and we really weren’t in any hurry, but we decided on the taxi mainly because even a backpack could be a hassle on a subway, since we didn’t know how crowded it would be (guessing not very on a Saturday), etc.  And nothing says “tourist” quite like a backpack on a metro.   

 The taxi driver spoke no English and it was his first week on the job.  He was really nice.  He kept calling someone to tell him how to get there.  Sherry’s Spanish is getting to be really impressive.  She was able to make our needs known and talked to him almost all the way. 

This part of Argentina is flat flat flat.  You could see it flying in.  Flat.  The country as a whole is very varied - the whole gamut of topographical features, but here  - yep, flat.

Next post:  our lodgings, our room and our host.

Tags:   Argentina · Buenos Aires · Immersion school · Learn Spanish · Spanish · Travel Spanish2 Comments